Social Change is evolution
Change of Social existence is a principled evolution . Science has propagated two theories about the creation of the universe and they still prevail. One of them holds that creation is the result of chance events. The other holds that all creation is the result of fixed necessity determined by universal laws. These two views have never been reconciled. Perhaps the world is looking for a hypothesis that would reconcile both of them. Sri Aurobindo postulated such a hypothesis and justified it. Instead of assuming God created the world, he assumed God, the infinite Being, became the world, the finite beings so that he may evolve back to His infinity. In the finite evolving to its original infinite status, everything appears to be chance because of countless possibilities. This answers the first position. As the evolution takes place through the graded powers of the evolving principles, the iron law is in action within the scope of each structure of power, answering the second proposition. Their meeting point is Life. The age-old question of free will and Fate is answered here. What is finite in the infinite plane is of the infinite freedom in the finite plane. This being our philosophic basis, we postulate that the evolution is a process of a directed movement and NOT a chance occurrence. This evolution passes through four stages --survival, growth, development, and evolution. Everywhere in history we meet with this directed succession, if not at the place of origin, at least in its spreading all over the globe. Whenever society tries to stall this course, humanity chooses another evolutionary path. Agriculture is followed by trade, commerce, urbanization, the role of Money, industrialization, and further expansion of trade outside the country. The development of mind creates new social forms, resulting in higher utilization of the existing forces by developing their basic structure. Even when the European settlers go to America, they too follow the pattern of succession. India that is trying to find its feet in expanding prosperity started with Green Revolution a couple of decades before its metropolitan cities responded to vigorous consumerism and its youth aspired for higher education. When states like USSR tried to stall the course and put industrialization ahead on the schedule, the basis of the political structure failed. India imitated the USSR approach to industrialization by investing heavily to expand steel production during her second five-year plan. Life forced India to abandon that course in preference to focusing on agriculture. It is noteworthy that the Indian government’s effort to expand primary education before Green Revolution was a failure. It is not only the four stages that are preserved or the progressive steps from agriculture to trade to industry to services. Even within each stage and step, the same sequence is preserved. It is not possible to cite one example either in the long run or short run where this direction is changed. The direction follows a gradation. It is there in the human body as physical, vital, mental and spiritual. In the process of production, agriculture is preceded by trade, which is followed by manufacture and service. In Money, it expresses as the transition from Money as a material thing represented by the coin to that Money based on trust represented by currency. We see it in banking which originally relied on the productive capacity of the individual and later shifted focus to the credit-worthiness of the customer, as in the case of the credit card. Memorization in education represents the physicality of the brain, whereas understanding represents the thinking capacity of the same brain shifting to a higher power on the original scale of gradation. The social goal is the evolution of the conscious individual from the subconscious collectivity. The individual progresses on the scale of physical, vital, etc. gradation. In all its social activities, society adheres to this direction. The principle is evolution of the Individual; the process is from the body to the mind and spirit. ---- http://server3.web-stat.com/4/humanscience.gif [http://www.web-stat.com/checkstats1.htm H] Category: Principles of Social Development